Ski Slopes Turn Orange in Eastern Europe

We’re used to green, blue, red and black slopes in skiing, but orange?

This time it’s not a grading of a ski run either, but the colour the snow has turned across a large swathe of mountainous regions in Eastern Europe.

Orange-tinted snow has been falling across Georgia, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries with ski areas in eastern Europe.

The orange snow has become a tourist attraction in its own right at the 2014 Winter Olympic venue of Sochi in Russia

Weather experts report that the unusual phenomenon is the result of sand and dust stirred up and carried into the atmosphere from the Middle East and/or North Africa hitting colder air in Eastern Europe after travelling east and getting deposited in the region.

Satellite imagery from NASA shows a lot of sand and dust in the atmosphere drifting across the Mediterranean.

Underneath the ‘Mars Like’ covering of orange snow, the earlier deposits are their normal white cover, sop skiers and boarders cutting through the orange leave white snow in their wake.